


private boolean love(char mc) {

by hanars



Category: Mystic Messenger (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mild Smut, nerd shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-23 00:18:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8306557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanars/pseuds/hanars
Summary: Snapshots of moments between Seven and MC. Spoilers for Seven's name, though I suspect if you're reading this that isn't really a spoiler.





	1. Priority-Inheritance Protocol

**Author's Note:**

> I have a few chapters of this planned but feel free to leave suggestions in the comments & I may add to it. I am leaving the number of chapters open-ended at this point.

Priority-Inheritance Protocol is a synchronization protocol in which all process that are accessing resources needed by a higher-priority process inherit the higher priority until they are finished with the resources in question.

  
\-------------------------------------

Seven stares at Rika’s desktop screen, watching as streams of diagnostics flicker quickly as he looks for, well, something. The problem is that he isn’t sure what that something is. Someone had manipulated so many of the classes and variables in the algorithms that kept the bomb in Rika’s apartment stable that he wasn’t really sure what code he was looking at anymore.

If he didn’t know better, he’d think it-- the code-- was mocking him.

On his laptop, he examines the contents of the file compared line-by-line to the contents of the backup that he made when he first programmed the explosive. Backups, after all, were imperative to keeping a system running-- and for recovering from near-catastrophic almost-failures. All in all, the program notes that there are thousands of changes to his original program.

 _Smart_ , he thinks. _The hacker changed so many random things throughout this program that it’ll be difficult to figure out which of these changes is entirely benign and which could crash the system with some external command._

You roll over in the bed behind him and his heart seems to stop until you’ve settled again. He looks at the clock-- it’s nearly three A.M.. He should be getting to bed, but what if--

_What if._

He’s used to his mind racing; it’s damn near impossible to halt the steady stream of processes that run in the background of Seven’s mind. He mastered multithreading at a young age, learning to prioritize thinking so that his train of thought doesn’t get muddled with low priority thoughts and desires.

But somehow, despite years of cultivating the seemingly perfect method for process synchronization, he finds himself prioritizing thoughts of you.

He grabs a handful of Honey Buddha Chips and tries to silence the way your voice echoes in his mind causing him to miss lines of diagnostic code as it floods the command line, to re-read the same lines over and over as he struggles to process the code that he knows so well he could practically re-write it from the ground up if that’s what it came to. He pauses his diagnostic and lets his mind wander, thinking about you, fast asleep. Wondering if you’re dreaming of him or if in your mind you’re far away from the whirlwind that’s swept you up since this hacker involved you in the RFA.

He pushes away from the desk and turns his chair to watch you as you sleep peacefully. You’re on your side, one hand tucked under your pillow, the other out in front of you, and your breathing is slow and steady. He walks over to the bed, kneels beside you, and reaches out to touch your hand. He presses his fingers into your hand, tracing your lifelines, wishing he could read his future with you in the creases of your palm.

You stir momentarily; your eyes flutter, but don’t open. You say his name and it’s barely more than a breath that hangs in the air between you but he hears it and he holds onto it. He files it away for later. He brushes hair out of your face and lets his hand rest on your cheek for no more than a moment before he stands up and walks away.

He sits back down in his chair with a heavy sigh and resumes the diagnostic. His fingers tap absently on the num pad keys, not pressing, just keeping a steady beat with a familiar sound that keeps him steady, like a metronome. His thoughts are heavy, but he’s working on correcting his process synchronization, and soon, with much effort, he’s managed to prioritize his work by re-categorizing it as keeping you safe.

Processing resumes normally.


	2. int main()

int mc=1;

int main()  
{  
   do {  
        protect();  
         }   
    while (i=1);  
return 0;  
}

\---------------------------

“You have to keep her company,” he says. “I fixed you because you’re-- you’re the parts of me that she likes. The parts she fell in love with. I can’t always be that person. I can’t always be 707.”

He’s whispering, but you can hear him from inside the apartment. It's early in the morning and he’s out in the hallway, as far as he can get from you without being too far to make sure you're safe. You know he won’t go too far, but you also can’t help but wonder whether he could have solved the problem that’s keeping him around hours ago. He speaks words of concern that you believe whole-heartedly, but his actions say “I’d be here regardless.”

“And protect her when I can’t. She’ll be safer with you than she is with me. She’ll never be safe as long as she’s with me.”

“I will protect her! You’re too dangerous!”

You lean against the wall, listening through the open door. Your body slides down the wall until you’re sitting, your knees drawn to your chest, listening to the exchange between the man you love and the robot he made for you.

“Yeah,” he says, crestfallen. “Too dangerous. I can’t let her be hurt because of me, but I can’t give her up, either. That’s where you come in. If she’s set on this, on me… Your priority is keeping her safe.”

“Seven programmed me to protect her! I'll protect her! Meoww~”

You hear footsteps in the hall as Seven begins to walk back to the apartment, but you don’t have time to stand up and move away from the door before he pushes it open and sees you sitting on the floor.

“You’re awake.” He closes the door and stands in front of you. “You were listening?”

“Yes,” you say, looking at your knees. “I wanted to see where you'd gone.”

Seven sighs, sets the cat down, and slides down the wall next to you. He wraps an arm around you and pulls you close. You snuggle yourself inside his sweatshirt, comforted by his familiar scent and you feel him kiss the top of your head.

“Saeyoung,” you say, respecting his wish for you to call him his birth name, though the name still feels foreign on your lips, “I know that you’re worried. I chose this, chose to be with you despite the dangers. I know it's not going to be easy. I won't tell you not to be concerned, but please trust me. Trust in my choice.”

Seven tilts your face up to his and meets your eyes. “It's not you that I don't trust, my love. It's everything but you. There are things in my life that were simple when it was just me. I could disappear if anything bad happened. Now that you're around, I can't do that. I don’t want to do that.”

You sit up and turn to face him, taking his hands in yours. You place your palms flat against his in the space between your bodies and keep them suspended in the air.

“Look, you and I, right now, we are like… our own private network.” You link your fingers with his and kiss his knuckles. “You know me, and I know you, and we are safe. There may be people who try to intrude or invade, but you're God Seven! If anyone can keep people out, build an impenetrable firewall-- it's you.”

He quirks an eyebrow as you crawl closer to him and place your hands on his chest. “I don't care what happens outside of us. As long as we have each other, we are safe together.”

He laughs, pulls you closer and kisses you softly, barely grazing your bottom lip with his teeth. “That didn't even make sense,” Seven says. “Remind me to teach you more about how network security actually works.”

“Yeah, but I got you to smile and kiss me,” you say proudly before moving to your knees. “Come on, it's barely six and I doubt you've slept. Come snuggle with me for a while, then I’ll make us a real breakfast.”

Seven pushes himself to his feet and takes you by the hand, helping you up. “Fine, but I want to be the big spoon this time.”


	3. Detour

“I’m sorry we missed the party,” he whispers to you. You’re half-asleep, curled up beside him on the hood of a bright red sports car somewhere hours outside of the city. You were driving somewhere- he doesn’t know where or what he’ll find there, he just knows how to get there. 

“I’m not.” You squeeze him around the middle and hum contentedly. “I like being here with you.”

It’s late and his vision was getting blurry, so he’d pulled over to show you what the stars looked like away from the pollution of the city. He speaks excitedly, pointing to clusters of stars, showing you constellations and pointing out satellites by name and purpose. 

“I have a program on my phone,” he explains as he turns on his phone screen, “that tracks all the satellites in a configurable radius. You’d be amazed how many things are orbiting the Earth! Look,” he points at a moving dot on his screen. “That’s a defense satellite. I usually stay away from them, but they provide a pretty fun challenge when I need them.”

He grins and puts his phone back in his pocket, drinks from the can of Dr. Pepper sitting next to him. “One of them even belongs to me,” he says. “Well-- not officially, and not a defense satellite, but I can use it anytime I want! Hacked into it for fun when I was in high school and I guess no one’s really monitoring access. It’s not really useful for much, but if you want readouts from the upper atmosphere…”

He trails off, talking about his desire to commandeer a more useful satellite with his next endeavor. You rest your hand on his chest, tracing lines from his shoulder across his middle, down to his lower belly, then across and back again. You’re listening to him speak, wondering how it was that you came to be here, hours outside the city, on what could be a wild goose chase with a man who hacks into satellites and high-profile corporations for fun. A man who you’ve grown to love, to trust implicitly, despite his warnings about what being in love with him could mean.

He stops talking and for a few minutes you both sit in silence. 

“I don’t know what we’re going to find,” he says, speaking quietly once more, “but no matter what happens, I promise to keep you safe.”

You lean over him and kiss him softly. His fingers tangle in the hair at the back of your head and when you pull away, he rolls towards you, pulling you against his chest. 

“I wanted us to have a good memory together, even if it’s just something small, like sitting on the hood of a car under the stars. I didn’t want all of our memories to be text messages, or memories from Rika’s apartment.”

He plays with your hair, twirling it around his fingers then pulling his fingers away, letting the hair slip off, and starting again. His other hand rests on your lower back and his fingernails drag lightly across your skin in slow circles. He can’t stand idle hands. 

“Did you mean it when you said you’d marry me on a space station?” you ask. 

“Did I say that? That doesn’t sound like me.” 

“Saeyoung!” You groan and sit up before dramatically throwing yourself over his stomach. You pinch at his sides playfully and he laughs and wiggles under you. “You said, you said you said! God Seven can’t go back on his word!” 

“Hey~~ Okay~ Okay!” He laughs and grabs your waist, tickling you back and wrapping his arms around you. You lay on his stomach, propping your chin up on your hands and kiss him on the nose before settling with your head under his chin. His breaths are slow and steady, but your face is pressed against his chest and you can feel his heart racing. 

The moon is full. There’s not a noise around but for a few crickets and frogs. The sky is full of stars both near and far, bright and dim. On the horizon, the first traces of a pink sunrise begin to show over the tops of distant trees.

He chuckles and kisses your forehead. “It doesn’t have to be a space station.”


	4. noodles

Seven isn’t even looking at his phone screen as he chats in the RFA messenger, he’s just staring at the computer. He’s great at multitasking. He’s probably thinking about Saeran, you think, but you don’t want to bring that up right now. Quite the opposite-- you wish you could take his mind off of it.

You’ve been standing in the kitchen cooking noodles, making sure that Seven has something to eat aside from soda and chips, and you’ve poured bowls for both of you. You set the bowls down on the desk in front of him and try to figure out what he's doing.

The conversation you’d like to have is off the table for the moment. He’s told you that he’d need time to think about the two of you being together, and that’s time that you’re happy to give him, but being so close to him without talking to him, without him looking at you or even holding his hand is starting to make you a little bit stir-crazy.

“So, what are you working on?” you ask, leaning over his shoulder. He looks up at you and then back to his screen. You are actually interested in what he’s doing, especially considering how much time he spends staring at what looks like the same screen. You want to be a part of Seven’s life and that means understanding the things that he does-- or at least, trying to understand.

And as an added bonus, maybe if he’s talking to you about this type of stuff, he’ll stop beating himself up over Saeran and have a few moments of peace.

“Well, if you’re very smart, like I am, you can backtrace the IPs of anyone who accesses your system. Of course, that assumes that you have the correct hooks in place, which I do.” He looks down at the bowl of noodles and adjusts his glasses. “Then the problem is that most people don’t just hack into somewhere without covering their tracks. It looks like Saeran used a proxy-- well, several proxies.

He taps a few keys on the keyboard, bringing up another wall of diagnostics that looks nearly identical to the previous screen.

“But you can trace back through the proxies,” you say. “Right?”

Seven laughs. “If you’re very smart,” he says, repeating himself. "Or have access to less-than-legal means of getting information." He snaps the diagnostic window to the side of the screen and maximizes another window beside it-- a map. “Once you have the final IP, which took longer in this instance than it usually does because so many proxies and tunnels were used, you can use it to find the location of the IP. It’s not as simple as they make it look in movies, though…”

“You can’t just find an address using an IP?”

“Not usually, no. But you can find general geographic location. From there it’s just a matter of monitoring outgoing network traffic, finding a baseline for normal, and seeing who’s outside of that.” He reaches out, takes the bowl and holds it in his lap for a moment before beginning to eat the noodles. “That’s obviously not the only way to do it, but that’s what I’m doing now.”

“You make it seem so easy!” You lean against him, looking at the screens for longer than you need to as an excuse to stay by him. “You really are God Seven!”

You smile down at him but he’s transfixed on the bowl of noodles. You feel your heart drop slightly at the idea of him being disappointed in the meal or unhappy with you for your cooking. “Oh, is something wrong? I can make you something else if you--”

“No!” Seven seems to snap out of his daze and looks up at you, holding the bowl in his lap. “I-- No one besides Mary Vanderwood has cooked for me in so long. Years, probably.” He takes a bite of the noodles. “You’re a really good cook, you shouldn’t waste your talents on me.”

You smile and nod your head. “Thanks, but the best part about cooking is doing it for the people I care about,” you explain. “You’re keeping me safe-- the least I can do is make you a meal.”

Seven grins and begins to say something, but his computer chimes and distracts him. “Oh! My algorithm’s found something!” He sets the bowl of half-eaten noodles down and begins typing furiously. You both watch as the map on his screen changes with the updated information he’s entered in. “Looks like this is where we need to go…”

He’s back in the zone now, researching blueprints and looking up security system information. He’s faster than you could have imagined as he switches between windows, websites, and command lines to access the information and resources he needs.

“Hey Seven,” you say, straightening and stepping back to give him space to work. “Promise me something?”

“Hmm?” He has a mouth full of noodles as he looks back at you, distracted.

"Promise when we get back, you’ll let me cook you a real meal?" 

He smiles and rubs the back of his neck nervously. “I’d- I think I'd really like that.”

“Okay,” you say with a smile, “then it’s a date.”

You pick up your bowl of noodles and head back to the kitchen to clean up while he works.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seven probably secretly subsists on a diet of Dr Pepper and Honey Buddha Chips because Vanderwood is a terrible cook, let's face it.
> 
> also i'm not a hacker I just work here


End file.
